Dead Space: Aftermath

Dead Space: Aftermath (2011) is a movie in my DVD collection that I recently watched again on Tubi. The storyline follows a lost space craft and a rescue ship that is sent to investigate. Shortly after arriving onboard the missing ship it's determined nothing is wrong with the ship but everyone who was onboard is missing. Can the rescue team find the survivors and figure out what happened?

This movie is directed by Mike Disa (Space Dogs) and contains the voices of Christopher Judge (The Dark Knight), Ricardo Chavira (Piranha 3D), Gwendoline Yeo (Star Wars: Clone Wars), Curt Cornelius (NCIS) and Graham McTavish (The Hobbit).

The animation for this is a bit uneven with the people just being okay but the infected, action scenes and people in their gear look amazing. I will say the animation and weapons are better than the previous film. The initial storyline of the father chasing his daughter is excellent. The infected imitating the non-infected is very well done also. The ending is entertaining and the movie has an Event Horizon feel to it in a lot of ways.

Overall this isn't perfect but is an entertaining animated science fiction/horror picture. I would score this a 6.5-7/10 and recommend seeing it once.

The 2D animation looks great in this film, and it pairs well with the grotesque nature of the story and it's hyperviolent contents, but then there's this awful... AWFUL 3D animation to represent the present day, and it's so, so, so, so, bad. Just an eyesore. I don't know who's idea that is, or what kind of budget constraints may have forced the team's hand, but the results are terrible to look at.

The writing didn't make any sense. The story had nothing to do with the original. By the plot of this one I'd be surprised that anyone on the crew of this movie saw the original movie.

In the Dead space - Downfall it was more a good vs. evil kind of theme, but in aftermath it just seemed like another poorly written 80's space horror movie. There was no resolve, the properties of artifact were rewritten for this movie in a less entertaining, and less interesting way.

Whatever, I'm kinda cheesed that I wasted time watching this. I was hoping for some kind of cohesive connection between the two movies and I got nothing.

Overall this is a fairly mediocre film. It's short, under 80 minutes, so it's not a waste of time even if you hate it. Dead Space: Downfall is much better even though it's 3 years older. The plot is more cohesive and so is the animation style, a very important aspect.

While there can be some complaints about the plot in Aftermath (mostly regarding repetition), it's reasonably decent, and the biggest complaint is the visual aspect. The film is divided into multiple parts and each is made differently - some with 2D animation and some with 3D animation. The 3D is completely awful despite the lighting (inexcusably worse than cutscenes from some PS1 games) and the 2D is weird in the last portion (not objectively BAD, but the style isn't fitting and heavily conflicts with previous sections). Most people would probably rate this as a 7 or 8 if Aftermath used the first part's 2D animation throughout.

If you're a fan of Dead Space it's probably worth watching Aftermath, but I wouldn't recommend it; I'd recommend Downfall instead. It's not amazing, but it's much better than Aftermath in all aspects.

Not being familiar with any of the "Dead Space" games, or the first animated movie, I have nothing to compare this to, so this is all by what I thought of this 2011 animation.

"Dead Space: Aftermath" had a nice enough story and it was easy to follow. The story is about a small group of four survivors who are rescued after a tragic occurrence, but now they have to tell their stories to people who seem to have little regards for their well-being. As I said, not being familiar with anything prior to this animated movie, then I have no idea how true or far from the original plot lines this movie is. The storyline was nice and well told.

However, the solid storyline was brought down tremendously as they had opted to use various styles of animation and art styles. Most of these, sadly enough, were not in my personal liking, and thus it brought down the enjoyment of the movie for me. Especially the CGI animation, that was just horrendous. It looked like it was released before they had applied the finishing touches to it. In my opinion, then "Dead Space: Aftermath" would have fared better had they opted to stay with just one style of art and animation (in my opinion, the style they used when they were telling doctor Cho's story).

As for the voice acting, well then I think they really did manage to put together a good group of people for the voice acting. So that was really working out well for the movie.

I am sure that this 2011 animated movie is a great thing for fans of the games, but it failed to fully ensnare and captivate me. I am giving "Dead Space: Aftermath" a 5/10 rating because of the story alone, the different art styles and animation styles was the knife that killed it off for me.